


Caught in a Snare

by Callaeidae3



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [13]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, Blade of Marmora Keith (Voltron), Blood and Injury, Gen, Hurt Keith (Voltron), Keith (Voltron) Whump, Non-Graphic Description of Injury, Survival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-02-10 20:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18668170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Callaeidae3/pseuds/Callaeidae3
Summary: BTHB: Caught in a SnareKeith lets his guard down on a BoM mission to a komar-devastated planet and walks right into a snare.





	Caught in a Snare

**Author's Note:**

> Requested by @toribubble

Keith can't help but feel unsettled. It's more than just his raised guard from being on a Blade mission, and it's more than the devastating punch to the gut that seeing the destruction of the komar brings. The trees are stripped of colour and leaves, the undergrowth reduced to sticks and compost, the ground itself looks I'll and there's a disturbing lack of anything living. The only life on the entire planet is himself.  
  
Thankfully, the hidden Blade outpost remained untouched. No one seems to have come to investigate it since the komar did it's damage, so by the looks of it they can count themselves lucky. Keith makes a mental note to include that in his report to Kolivan when he gets back.   
  
Keith makes quick work of getting in and out of the base, following his mission's instructions to check for signs of non-Blade presence first. He finds no trace. After downloading and subsequently wiping the computer system of all Blade data that had been collected here, Keith exits the building and heads back in the direction of his ship.   
  
It's sad to think this planet was full of flourishing forest. He picks up his pace, not wanting to linger here. It's too sickening. According to Kolivan, this planet used to be home to a species of massive tusked bear-like creatures. While he's grateful he doesn't have to risk running into one of those, he'd almost rather stumble across one if it meant this planet had life again.   
  
He gets too lost in his thoughts and too comfortable in the knowledge that he has no enemies to be watching out for here - a major mistake - that he fails to see the gleaming metal poking out of the composting muddy mess of undergrowth and falling leaves.   
  
Metal jaws clamp themselves around his ankle. Fright grips him and he instinctively goes to leap away only for the grinding pain to yank him to a stop and pull him to the ground.   
  
Keith grits his teeth against the scream. A snare. He walked straight into a snare trap.   
  
He should've thought about it more, about what Vrek had warned him about after returning from headquarters after being based here - about how, after the komar struck and food became scarce, how the planet's people had turned to the tusked bears as a food source while waiting for aid to arrive. Of course, the bears had turned to them as a food source, too.   
  
The aid hadn't reached the people in time. Instead of being wiped out by hunger, it was the tusked bears who killed them all first. Mercy, perhaps, if not for the fact that they probably would've been able to survive the hunger long enough for the aid to reach them.   
  
The tusked bears had died out soon after with nothing left to sustain them. But while the species vanished, the traps laid out to catch them did not.   
  
It's something that hadn't crossed Keith's mind until now.   
  
It's his own fault for letting his guard down. The price he has to pay for that mistake? Sharing the same fate as everything else on this planet unless he can get his foot out of the trap.   
  
Looking at, it's reminiscent of Earth bear trap,  toothed, metal, and linked to a small length of chain pinning it to the ground. The stake it's connected to must be buried in the ground. Keith's going to have to dig out that stake or pry the metal off his leg by hand.   
  
Every second he sits here, pain lances up his leg with every heartbeat. He feels around the metal, wincing when he accidentally aggregates the wound, but finds nowhere he can slip his fingers. He takes his luxite blade in hand and considers carefully.   
  
If he uses the knife as leverage, he's likely to cut himself and worsen whatever nerve damage the snare is likely working its way towards.   
  
Maybe it would be better to just try rip the stake out of the ground. If he can do that at least, he should be able to get back to the ship. Even if he has to do so in agony, it's better than being stuck here waiting for time to kill him.   
  
He could sever his own foot off above the ankle with his luxite blade, but that's a last resort. He could loose too much blood, pass out and bleed out before he makes it back to the ship.   
  
The stake it is then.   
  
Keith first tries cutting the chain but it's made out of a metal not even the luxite is able to cut through. He curses, at the metal, at the chain, at himself. Moving himself around as best he can with what the short length of chain allows him, he hunches over his ensnared leg and starts digging.   
  
The mud is thick. Too thick. Keith stabs his knife into the ground and follows the feel of the stake down, down...until the blade is buried. He transforms it into a sword and discovers, with horror, that the stake extends even past that.   
  
This isn't a trap to catch people, Keith realises, sweating. This is a trap made to catch and hold enormous, powerful beasts.   
  
Getting himself free without resorting to removing his foot is going to be much harder than he thought.   


* * *

  


Eleven hours later, he's still stuck. Kolivan will be reporting him as missing soon.   
  
Maybe if they send someone else in to get the data Keith has, maybe then they'll see his ship and then come find him? If they, too, don't get caught in a snare like Keith is. But the likelihood of Kolivan sending someone else here before Keith's time is up is very, very low.   
  
Keith almost laughs at how much his situation resembles this planet's people's.   
  
He has three options then: keep trying to get free, cut off his foot or wait for time to kill him. Since the first appears to be to avail, Keith decides the second is something he's just going to have to do in order to not be claimed by the third.   
  
He won't be able to run, so he'll have to limp back to the ship - or rather, hop. That'll take him more time, costly time, and he'll risk bleeding out, so he'll have to do a decent job at a tourniquet. He'll also have to watch out for other traps on the way. Being able to hop is better than having to lose another foot and crawl.   
  
Keith's mentally preparing himself for what he has to do when a roar sounds. His blood freezes. No.   
  
No, there shouldn't be anything out here. Everything's dead. He must've been hallucinating, right? His mind must be playing tricks on him.   
  
But then he hears movement, dead leaves rustling and footfalls pounding the ground and growing ever closer. It's dark now, so he can't see anything, but whatever is coming for him has sharp, glowing teal eyes that seem to have locked straight into him.   
  
Keith swallows. The tusked bears didn't have glowing blue eyes, did they?   
  
He transforms his blade into a sword, ignoring the fact that he just gave his position away. The beasts can probably smell his fear anyway - that's what must've lured them here.   
  
Keith shifts into as best a defensive stance he can manage and waits.   
  
"Keith, is that you?"   
  
"Keith, it's us! Can you help us find you?"   
  
All tension melts out of his body. He stares at the glowing teal eyes - no, the glow of paladin armour - in shock. "Hunk? Shiro?"   
  
A hand lights up purple, acting as a flashlight as the two Paladins weave amongst the shadows and trees. "Keith, keep talking. We're almost to you."   
  
"No, no, don't come here! There's traps! Snares! You'll get caught if you -"   
  
"It's okay," Shiro reassures him. "Pidge disabled them before we landed."   
  
A beam of light shines in his eyes and he squeezes them shut. "Disabled them?"   
  
"They're electronically controlled. Ah, there you are. Hunk, over here!" With a few more strides, Shiro arrives at Keith's side. He shines his glowing hand light over Keith's leg, where to snare's teeth are digging into his flesh, and takes a deep breath. "Actually, Hunk, you might want to stay away. I have a feeling this wound isn't gonna look all that pretty."   
  
The heavier footsteps following Shiro come to a hesitant stop. "What kind of wound?"   
  
"Keith got caught in one of those snares."   
  
The corner of Keith's upper lip twitches. "No need to shout out my failures to the world."   
  
Shiro crouches down beside him, eyes fixed on the snare and assessing the contraption. "Failures?"   
  
"I wasn't looking where I was going. Got to comfortable with the thought of there being no living threats that I forgot to think about the inanimate ones."   
  
Shiro's only response is a half-distracted him. "Mistakes happen. Sometimes the consequence is just more severe, that's all. Alright, this is gonna hurt like hell, let's be honest - "   
  
"Just do it," Keith mutters, voice tight.   
  
"I'll cut through the chain first, okay?"   
  
Shiro doesn't give him much warning before his glowing hand brightens and heats up. He brings it down in one swift chop and the chain breaks away from the stake. There's a pinch added to the pain that's been constant these last eleven hours, and that's it.   
  
But it's not it, not really. "I'm going to lift your leg up," Shiro says carefully. "I'll need to brace it on my knee so that I can do better with the precision of cutting through the metal."   
  
Keith grimaces and looks away. He clenches his fists as Shiro gently raises his leg so that his knee is hooked over Shiro's thigh, and then digs his nails into his palms when Shiro shifts his leg so that it's his calf resting on Shiro's leg instead.   
  
There's no warning given. Shiro's hand touches the metal and Keith screams. The metal bites in further as Shiro's hand sears through it. There's the feeling of the snare loosening, breaking, losing its tightness around his leg, but he can barely feel it above the agony his ankle is in.   
  
He's trembling, but Shiro holds his leg in place. Keith fights the urge to pull it away as Shiro takes a bandage from his belt pocket and winds it firmly around the wound.   
  
"I'm glad you didn't decide to sacrifice your foot," Shiro murmurs.   
  
Keith groans. "Was about to."   
  
"Now you don't need to. The wound is pretty bad, but it's not infected yet so we just have to worry about blood posioning. Some cryopod time should be able to heal it up well though."   
  
The lack of strength in Shiro's voice betrays his nervousness. Keith's already prepared for the possibility that he may still end up having to lose that foot, so Shiro doesn't need to say it. But there's something else besides that that had Shiro unnerved as he is and Keith thinks he knows that too.   
  
"You okay?" he asks.   
  
Shiro grunts. "Says the one who's actually injured."   
  
"It's the komar, isn't it? You can feel it too, right? The eerie feel it's destruction gives off on this planet?"   
  
Finishing the bandaging, Shiro swallows. "Yeah....it's....it's quite...."   
  
There's no word for it. Disturbing. Unsettling. Spooky. Sickening. They all fall short of describing it at the intensity it really is.   
  
"Okay," Shiro says. "We need to keep that elevated, so do you mind if me or Hunk carries you?"   
  
Keith is tempted to insist he can walk, even if only on one foot, but considering the pain he's already in, decides it's stupid to even want to. "It's fine," he says instead.   
  
Before Keith can change his mind, Shiro lowers his leg and gently sets it on the ground, only to scoop him up with an arm under his knees and the other around his back a moment later. Keith's too tired to protest.   
  
A terrible shaking takes over him as they start walking. Keith clings to Shiro the best he can, but he can feel his arms growing weak as he tries to hold onto his grip around Shiro's neck and shoulders. It gets colder, too, as they're walking, and yet when he says as much aloud, Hunk remarks that he feels no difference in the air temperature from when they left the Black Lion.   
  
Keith stares at him, confused. "Isn't it colder?"   
  
Hunk exchanges a worried look with Shiro. "Nah, I think that's just you."   
  
Still confused and feeling somewhat nauseous as the cold continues to sweep over him, Keith peers over his knees at his bandaged wound and frowns. "Where did you get red bandages from? I thought they were universally white."   
  
"Yeah," Shiro murmurs, "they are. That's why we've picked up the pace a little."   
  
Keith struggles to understand the logic of that. Why would they need to walk faster simply because a bandage is red instead of white? It takes a while for it all to click, and when it does, Keith loses his grip on Shiro's shoulders.   
  
Blood loss. He hadn't been bleeding much when the metal was still in the wound, but after removing it.....   
  
"'m I dying?"   
  
Shiro tightens his arm around Keith's back. "No, you are not."

"But that's….red….stuff….bandage ain't meant to…..white…..red….."

Keith wonders why he's slurring so badly, but then his vision starts going wonky and his head starts feeling distant and faint. He thinks the  ringing in his ears is some kind of emission Black's giving off, but when he looks around for her he can't see her anyway.

Dizziness overwhelms him, and then there's nothing to his awareness but pain.

 

* * *

 

 

A day later, he stumbles out of oblivion and coldness, his feet taking him right into the arms of Shiro. One ankle feels number than the other, but it's functional.

The only mark snare ended up leaving on him is a jagged line of scarring.

 

 


End file.
